Джордж Пелеканос: The Sweet Forever

Karras wasn’t much of a teacher. He claimed to love books, but seemed wary of overanalyzing them. The syllabus required that the students read six assigned novels over the course of the semester and show up for class twice a week. There would be a final because there had to be a final, but Karras assured them it would be lightly weighted against their overall participation in the weekly discussion, which tended to concern the book at hand only marginally. To no one’s surprise — he always looked a little stoned — Karras admitted his love of marijuana one day to everyone in the room. At undergrad Maryland U, this was akin to pulling one’s finger out of the dike. After his confession, a majority of his students began to meet out on the mall, where kids played Frisbee and caught sun and walked bandanna-clad dogs, and get smoked up together before his class. The discussions thereafter were sometimes heated, momentarily interesting, frequently incoherent, and instantly forgotten. At the time, the word on campus was that Dimitri Karras’s class was “really deep.”

Donna Morgan nailed Karras behind his desk after class one afternoon about three weeks into the semester. There was little verbal foreplay before she brazenly cupped a handful of his jeans. She straddled him on his chair and gave him the goods, really pushed it out. He had this smile on his face, this I-Don’t-Give-a-Fuck-About-Nothin’ smile, that should have hipped her to his character. He never even said, “Maybe we shouldn’t,” or even the more cowardly “Do you think we should?” There was no ethical question raised because neither of them thought to bring it up. Teaching was just something Karras was doing on the way to something else, and Donna attended classes with naked disinterest and a blind eye to the future. Indeed, Karras ankled his position at the end of the semester. Donna dropped out of school at the same time and never returned.

They had stayed boyfriend and girlfriend for a few months into the new year. He began to move dope in quantity, and she took a salesclerk job out at the Hecht’s in Wheaton Plaza. They broke up, for reasons Donna could not now remember, sometime in the spring. Donna heard later from a friend that Dimitri had gotten into some unspecified bad shit in the summer of ’76, and that he had given up wholesale for retail — records, that is.

Over the next ten years, she ran into him maybe twice. Once down on 19th Street in 1980, when they were both standing in line to see Raging Bull at the Dupont. On that night, Dimitri wore a new mask: an Elvis Costello pompadour and a deep-weave overcoat with heavily oilskin shoes, straight off the cover of Get Happy, his retro Teddy Boy look. She saw him a couple of years later at the Wax Museum, Graham Parker’s Real Macaw tour. Karras wore a black sport jacket, pointed Italian shoes, and a skinny black tie, like the Special Beat Service boys coming off the plane. Karras had begun to go gray.

On those occasions when cocaine brought them back together, she called him Mr. Karras. It was an unsubtle jab at their age difference, but also a reminder of their teacher/student history. Karras didn’t seem to get it. If he did, he didn’t care.

Mask or no, Donna had to admit that Dimitri Karras looked good behind the wheel of his BMW. Rumpled, waved out, or yuppified, the man always had style.

“Nice car,” said Donna.

“You think?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I didn’t want to be one of them. But I saw this on the lot and fell in love. The navy over burgundy combo, it’s bad, isn’t it?”

Donna ran her hand over the leather seat. “It’s really nice.”

“I been workin’ hard these last few years. I had the money. No kids to support, nothin’ like that, so...”

“You don’t have to apologize. Everybody’s making money these days. You gotta spend it on something, right?” Donna looked out the window. They were coming into Georgetown via M. “Where we going?”

“I’ve got to stop by the store, check in.”

Marcus had told him to go home. But Karras would call Marcus from the Georgetown store, score a few points, let him know he was still on the case.

Karras said, “Where were you and Eddie off to tonight?”

“Echo and the Bunnymen at Lisner. I left the tickets in his visor.”

“Funny, him taking off like that.”

“I know. I wonder why he booked.”

Karras looked over at Donna in her seat, the cut of her black-stockinged thigh. Karras hadn’t mentioned his conversation with Marcus to Donna. He was glad Eddie Golden had taken off. He didn’t care about Eddie heisting a pillowcase out of some drug car. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want Donna to know, not tonight. He wanted Donna alone.

“Well,” said Donna, “I guess that takes care of the concert.”

“Look, we’ll call Eddie in a little while, find out what happened. With that crash so close to him, he probably got spooked is all. Maybe you guys can still make the show. Anyway, if you ask me, he did you a favor, taking off with those tickets.”

“Aw, come on, the Bunnymen rock.”

“The Bunnymen suck.”

“Okay. What were you going to do tonight?”

“I don’t know. Check out some music, I guess.”

“You know,” said Donna, “if Eddie doesn’t turn up, I got nothin’ to do.”

“Eddie doesn’t show,” said Karras, “it’s you and me.”

Donna stifled a smile. The situation couldn’t be better. She had a virgin gram in the pocket of her skirt, and she was riding in a new Beamer with a good-looking man behind the wheel.

Karras was a sprinter, and Eddie went long distance. She figured, whatever happened tonight, Eddie would be around in the morning. She hoped Eddie wouldn’t post tonight.

“Mr. Karras?”

“Huh?”

“If we goin’ out, I’m gonna need some cigarettes.”

Karras cut up 34th, hooked a left onto P Street, found a parking space up near Wisconsin. Karras and Donna had a couple of quick spoons, left the car. Donna stopped in Neam’s market for two packs of Marlboro Lights — she could go through two decks easy behind a night of cocaine — and then the two of them walked south on Wisconsin Avenue toward the store.

They passed a Mean Feet, the city’s premier shoe boutique. A salesman named Randolph stood outside, leaning against the display window, smoking a cigarette.

“Hey, man,” said Karras, “what’s goin’ on?”

“Ain’t nothin’ to it,” said Randolph. “Just tryin’ to make a livin’ out here. How those Zodiacs treatin’ you?”

Karras looked down at the black leather lace-ups on his feet, rubber soled, utilitarian. Randolph had sold them to Karras, and they were his favorite pair of kicks.

“Treatin’ me good.”

“Got some Zodiac boots, too, nice low heels, got your name on ’em.”

“I’ll be in soon.”

“You, too, girlfriend,” said Randolph to Donna. “Time for you to come on in and see the footdiatrist.”

Donna laughed. “Okay. Thanks.”

“I’m serious, baby. Not that those shorties you got on don’t look good on them legs of yours. Mm-mm-mm.”

“We’ll be back,” said Karras.

“I know you will. And when you do, don’t forget to ask for Shoedog.”

They kept walking. They passed Commander Salamander, where rich kids from Potomac and McLean came downtown to get their hair dyed pink and buy their bondage “punk” look from the middle-aged proprietors. Well, thought Karras, at least the kids are having fun. Everyone these days is having big fun.

Karras could deal with Georgetown: the lack of parking, the panhandlers, the gimmick bars serving shitty draft beer to Northern Virginia kids on weekend nights, the suburbanites and the crowds, the Iranian and Iraqi merchants selling off-brand clothing and shoes, the “jewelers” pushing gold chains to the drug kids driving in from across town. Marcus Clay couldn’t deal with Georgetown, so this had become Karras’s turf by default. You needed a record store in this part of town if you wanted to be in the business in D.C.